Discourses on fathers who use intimate partner violence: an example from Icelandic mass media

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite an increased interest in studying masculinity in terms of the merging experiences of fatherhood and violence, the way this subject position appears in the media is often left out of the academic debate on fatherhood and masculinity. This paper offers a contribution to extant research on fatherhood and masculinity by providing a discourse analysis of how fathers and violence are constituted in Icelandic mass media from a feminist poststructuralist perspective. Our findings indicate that ‘good and involved’ versus ‘bad and violent’ fathers are framed in the media as two fundamentally different types of fathers. This paper demonstrates the critical role mass media plays in reproducing individualized discourses about IPVAW by presenting fathers who have been violent as a certain type of ‘strange’ and ‘dangerous’ men. Through this representation of fathers who have been violent, the media fails to acknowledge gendered social norms and structures that continue to produce IPV against women and children.